Current concerns surrounding myriad environmental matters encourage research into mediated and cultural constructions of the environment and nature. Such constructions (1) often occur via a diverse array of mainstream and digital outlets; (2) implicitly or explicitly encourage certain ways of thinking and acting while silencing others.
This paper broadly explores environmental discourses present within mainstream and digital media texts. Specifically, this paper examines fracking texts relating to the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota and Montana. Fracking represents a controversial topic of increasing cultural and academic awareness, as evidenced by films such as Gasland, various pro-energy advertising campaigns, anti-fracking protests, and a recent special issue of Environmental Communication devoted to the topic.
Based upon Dryzek’s environmental scholarship, I first identify two dominant environmental discourses present within this study’s sample of media texts. The first—Promethean—parallels neoliberal themes of limitless growth and human ingenuity, while viewing nature as raw material to fuel economically/materially defined notions of human progress. The second—administrative rationalism—solves complex environmental problems via bureaucratic expertise and contentious regulation in augmenting existing systems versus proposing new ones.
After highlighting enviro-discursive presences within these texts, I consider digital media’s potential to introduce alternative environmental knowledge into our cultural lexicon. Promethean and administrative rationalist discourses both represent decades-old, taken-for-granted approaches to environmental matters. Therefore I argue that, based on texts analyzed for this case study, digital media’s capacity to introduce alternative knowledge is limited in that structural matters such as extraction and consumerism remain largely unquestioned. These silences embody a central tension faced by digital media: the potential to construct alternative knowledge vis-à-vis mainstream outlets, while not being so alternative that their message fails to influence significant numbers.
About the presenterBrian Hough
Research interests in mass communication, environmental communication.